La Bola Negra Heads to the Oscars: How Spain’s Submission Was Made

Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s film is Spain’s submission for the Oscar for best international feature. It arrives with the best director award from Cannes, the People’s Choice Award from Toronto and one of the strongest box office openings in Spanish film history. Behind it is a €9.9 million Spanish-French co-production, shot across several Spanish regions and sold to North America after a bidding war.

On September 16, Alejandro Amenábar — the last Spaniard to win this award, with The Sea Inside in 2005 — opened the envelope at the Spanish Film Academy’s headquarters in Madrid and announced the chosen title: La Bola Negra (The Black Ball). The film by Los Javis, as the directing duo is known, was picked over the two other shortlisted titles, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s El ser querido and Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s Los domingos.

Now comes the hardest part. Being Spain’s submission does not mean being nominated. On December 15, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will publish a shortlist of 15 films, and on January 21, 2027, it will announce the five nominees. The ceremony will take place on March 14, 2027, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. There is a recent precedent: last year, Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt reached the nomination stage in this same category.

A Submission With an International Track Record

La Bola Negra had its world premiere in the Official Selection at Cannes in May. There, Calvo and Ambrossi shared the best director award with Paweł Pawlikowski. The film then won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, a prize the US industry considers a strong Oscar indicator. It also won the audience award in the Perlak section of the San Sebastián Film Festival.

The film is inspired by Federico García Lorca’s unfinished work of the same name and by Alberto Conejero’s play La piedra oscura. Conejero co-wrote the screenplay with Los Javis. The film tells three connected stories of gay men in 1932, 1937 and 2017. The cast is led by Guitarricadelafuente (in his film debut), Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes and Lola Dueñas. Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close play brief but pivotal roles.

An International Co-Production Built to Travel

La Bola Negra is a Movistar Plus+ original produced with Suma Content Films, the new film division of Los Javis’ production company. Pedro Almodóvar’s El Deseo and France’s Le Pacte co-produce, with participation from Atresmedia. According to the ICAA, Spain’s national film agency, Spain accounts for 90% of the production and France for 10%. The registered budget is €9.9 million, including €1 million in public funding awarded under the agency’s general production grants.

The commercial strategy had an international focus from the start:

French sales company Goodfellas handles sales outside Spain and France.
After Cannes, Netflix won a bidding war for North American rights. According to the trade press, the deal was worth around $5 million.
Netflix is releasing the film in US theaters with a longer-than-usual theatrical window before bringing it to its platform.
In Spain, Elastica handles theatrical distribution, and the film will later move to Movistar Plus+.

Where Was La Bola Negra Filmed?

The shoot lasted twelve weeks:

Start: it began on August 26, 2025, in Castil de Carrias, a nearly abandoned village in the province of Burgos.
Other Spanish locations: Cantabria, Sigüenza (Guadalajara), Granada and Madrid.
Wrap: the crew completed the shoot in Athens.

Granada hosts many of the locations because of its connection to Lorca. The Carmen de los Mártires became the film’s casino, and the shoot moved through the Albaicín and other spots in the historic center. The final stretch was filmed in Sierra Nevada, in snow and difficult weather. The 2017 storyline was shot in Madrid, at locations such as the Ateneo.

The film was shot on 35mm, with cinematography by Gris Jordana. Much of the crew previously worked with Los Javis on the series La Mesías. It shows how a Spanish period production can rely on stable crews, a network of film commissions and very different locations within a single country.

A Box Office Hit in Spain

Audiences have matched the festival run:

Opening day: on September 25, it grossed €1.32 million and drew 175,000 viewers across 414 screens. It was the second-best opening day for a Spanish film in a decade.
Opening weekend: it grossed nearly €4.7 million, the ninth-best opening for a Spanish film ever.
Second weekend: it earned more than in its first, which is unusual.
Three weekends: it had grossed more than €23.5 million and drawn 3.3 million viewers, according to Rentrak.

These figures need careful reading. Box office is gross revenue split among exhibitors, distributors and producers, so it is not the same as the film’s profit. Even so, the combination of box office, international sales and platform deals shows a Spanish auteur film performing in several markets at once.

What This Case Says About Film Production in Spain

Whatever happens at the Oscars, La Bola Negra brings together several of the strengths the Spanish industry wants to show international partners:

Homegrown creative talent able to compete at major festivals.
Co-production structures with Europe.
Crews capable of handling a period shoot across several regions.
A film that attracts US buyers.

At Soul Pictures, we develop and produce feature films and series with international appeal, and we provide production services to foreign companies filming in Spain. If you have a project in development and are looking for a production partner in Spain, talk to our team.